Mother pays tribute to late son by greening the Inner Mongolia deserts

For the past decade, Yi Jiefang has been on a crusade to honour the wish of her deceased son - to plant the deserts of Inner Mongolia with trees. Now, with more than 1.1 million trees in the ground, the 65-year-old who has poured most of her savings into the cause says she must carry on, not just for the sake of her son but to raise awareness of the role of trees in protecting the environment.

I'm a native of Shanghai. I studied and worked in Japan in the 1980s. Several years later my husband followed me to Japan, and was followed later by my son, Yang Ruizhe. We were happy together and our life was improving in those years. My son was admitted to a prestigious university in Japan and I was so proud of him. I thought I was so fortunate, but then disaster struck. My son died in a traffic accident in 2000 at the age of 22. For two years after his death, I thought of him every day. I wanted to do something to honour Ruizhe, since I felt guilty. He had to be separated from me for a long time when he was a child and he faced difficulties when he arrived in Japan, which was a completely different environment for him. He studied hard and was devoted to us. I remembered that two weeks before his accident, he and I watched a news programme on CCTV about sandstorms in northern China. He told me that he would return to China to plant trees in those deserts after he graduated. I later found that he had been concerned about the sandstorms for a long time. I said to myself, "Ruizhe has left this world and it's a pity that he didn't realise his dream". I decided to fulfil his wishes. I quit my job at a tour agency in Japan, which had allowed me to gain permanent residency, and returned to China with my husband in 2003. I registered an NGO in Shanghai called NPO Green Life and embarked on my cause of tree planting.

I had never been to a desert before and when I saw my first in 2003, I was deeply impressed. It was so beautiful, stretching far and wide and full of golden sand. But I also realised that it was dry, desolated, useless and threatening humans' existence. I sighed at how much of China was on the verge of desertification. My plan to plant trees in deserts was so necessary. I travelled more than 8,000km across Inner Mongolia to inspect its deserts and decided to launch my project in the Taminchagan Desert, near Tongliao city in eastern Inner Mongolia.